


The Revolution Will Be Illustrated

by dhampyresa, sevenofspade



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Digital Art, Fanart, Fanfiction, Gen, Mixed Media, Traditional Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:48:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dhampyresa/pseuds/dhampyresa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: Sabine changes and her art changes with her.   According to the wishes of the artist, every piece is presented as it might have been at the time of its inception.





	1. Fight for Mandalore fight for THE EMPIRE, Unnamed artist, 25:5:15

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shiningstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiningstar/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Thanks to [chiiyo86](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86) for the beta.
> 
> The title is a reference to Gil Scott-Heron's [The Revolution Will Not Be Televised](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised).

When she was eleven, she entered the Imperial Academy. That first year, she was unremarkable, like her family told her to be. 

In her second year, she was twelve and she forgot. She was second in Piloting, first in Close Combat and caught drawing in Imperial History. Her teacher was a kind man; he was not the one who caught her and he did not punish her.

Instead, he sat her down after hours and explained to her how even the Empire needed artists, to fight the battles no one else could, the battles of hearts and minds. That was how she learned what the word "propaganda" meant, when she was told she could make some, for Mandalore and the glory of the Empire. He enrolled her in the contest. She returned to her bed in the dorm head blazing with ideas.

For weeks she thought of nothing else and did not notice that she no longer had Imperial History in her schedule. She drew endless iterations of her masterpiece under the covers after lightsout. She was moved up an agegroup in Close Combat. Her art consumed her. She would make her family proud. She would make Mandalore proud. She would make the Empire proud.

When she placed in the contest, she had never felt prouder. 

She could not understand why her family were sad. They were the only one who would know the Mandalorian in her art was supposed to be her, armour patterned after her mother's, in the dull grey of Imperial carriers or Death Watch.

It was when she wanted to tell her teacher that she realised she had not seen him since then. No one could tell her where he was. Most adults seemed to not even know who he was anymore.

She'd been lucky, she realised.

She never saw her teacher again. Neither did anyone else.

She saw an awful lot of her _masterpiece_ though, even after she left the Academy, guns blazing and not having touched a paintbrush in months.

  
_Fight for Mandalore fight for THE EMPIRE, Unnamed artist, 25:5:15_

[](http://imgur.com/IxrpZpi)


	2. Starbird: WANTED, unknown graffiti artist, 30:1:13

She was an outlaw for years, after she ran. It wasn't lonely. She had Ketsu by her side and her own face staring back at her from wanted poster the galaxy over.

Once, she ran into Fett on a job. They were chasing different bounties, but he called her 'little sister' the whole time and she didn't tell him to stop. She hadn't seen her family in years; it wasn't the same, but it was close. Mandalore, but not Empire.

Five days later, Ketsu called her 'too soft'. She punched at Ketsu, trying to show her exactly how soft she wasn't, but her fist connected with thin air. It was a short fight. She'd won. 

She felt like she'd lost, later, when Ketsu abandonned her.

Ketsu had said she never should have trusted an artist. She hadn't touched a paintbrush or pencil in years at that point, and if she still thought of herself as an artist, it went to show how soft she was.

It didn't matter. She was free. (Wasn't she?)

The next time she saw her own face, she went into the store it was plastered on and bought some paint.

  
_Starbird: WANTED, unknown graffiti artist, 30:1:13_


	3. TIE DYE, Sabine Wren, 35:3:9

_The war is over_ , they said after Endor and the second Death Star.

Sabine didn't believe them. The war was never over for Mandalore.

But still. She had her hair dyed Empire red -- red like propaganda and _Fight for Mandalore fight for THE EMPIRE_ , red like _Starbird_ on a wanted poster. She had her hair dyed Empire red fading into Starbird orange into sunrise yellow.

For once she let herself follow the cheap lure of easy symbolism.

For once she didn't dye her hair herself, but she found a friend to do it for her. Leia had been Princess Organa, Last Crownhead of Alderaan for far too long, Sabine thought. Leia dyed Sabine's hair and the red on her hands resolutely didn't look like blood or Vader's lightsaber.

The next day, Sabine went out and found Skywalker's badly burned out TIE fighter. Chopper had already start scavenging it for parts and Sabine shooed the droid away. She looked at the TIE fighter -- not as a TIE fighter, but as a canvas.

She shook her paintspray and drew the last starbird of the Rebellion as big as she could, splashed bold and bright all over the TIE fighter's wing. 

Then she took out her paintbrush -- the first thing she'd bought after leaving the Academy.

She painted herself.

She painted herself over the starbird -- it wasn't going to be the last starbird, not if she had anything to say about it. In the painting, she wore her Mandalorian armour, same as she'd worn on that propaganda poster, all those years ago, only this time, she wasn't wearing a helmet.

It looked too clean. That she wasn't wearing a helmet didn't matter. The face staring back at her was looked like hers, but it wasn't her.

She painted designs on the cold grey of her armour, as she had in life, before turning Stealth. Checkerboard pattern, stylised lothcat and all the rest. There. That was better. Still not perfect, though.

She took a step back. Framed her painting between her fingers. Her dirty, paint-stained fingers.

She went back to the painting, this time adding in all the colour in her life. The green streak on her leg from teaching Numa to paint. The paint on her gauntlets. The paint on her boots. It didn't matter if it didn't match. It mattered that it was there.

There. Now she was herself.

Sabine Wren.

  
_TIE DYE, Sabine Wren, 35:3:9_

[](http://imgur.com/3x3FiRJ)


End file.
